26.0 Introduction

Mobile devices have been experiencing an explosive rise in popularity recently, no doubt because of advances in the mobile technology market. Cell phones are beginning to act more like PDAs and PDAs are beginning to take on the functions of a cell phone. At one time, a mobile device was simply a small palm- sized computer that allowed you to store contact information, keep a calendar, and play a game of solitaire in meetings. Now these devices are used as digital cameras , video phones, multiplayer gaming platforms, and connected appliances because of wireless access points in airports and coffee shops .

The Smart Device Extensions in Visual Studio .NET 2003 represent the first time that mobile-device development is ingrained into the Integrated Development Environment (IDE). When the first mobile platform from Microsoft came out, developers used Visual C++ with a downloadable toolkit. Soon, they used a standalone development environment called Embedded Visual Tools that allowed developers to plug in mobile software development kits (SDKs) for new devices and supported both Visual Basic and Visual C++. The Smart Device Extensions are the largest of mobile development offerings to date with the addition of the .NET Compact Framework, a new language in C#, and the rich design environment of Visual Studio .NET. This chapter looks at various aspects of Smart Device Extensions and the .NET Compact Framework. Because a lot of the material covered in this book translates so well, we focus on mobile-device “specific techniques.